Environmental Law for Engineers and Geoscientists

Today’s engineering and geoscience student needs to know more than how to design a new or remedial project or facility. Questions of law and ambiguities of terms often occur in contracts for mining, landfills, site reclamation, waste depositories, clean up sites, land leases, operating agreements, joint ventures, and other projects. Work place situations arise where environmental compliance methods are challenged by enforcement agencies. Although the statutes, rules, and regulations may seem to be worded clearly and specifically, there are often questions in application and sometimes varied interpretations.Environmental Law for Engineers and Geoscientists introduces simplified American jurisprudence focusing on the legal system, its courts, terms, phrases, administrative law, and regulation by the agencies that administer environmental law. The book comprehensively covers the “big five” environmental statutes: NEPA, CAA, CWA, CERCLA, and RCRA. With the basic law chapter as a foundation, the book covers the practical applications of environmental law for geo-engineers. It concludes with a chapter on the growing area of expert witnessing and admissible evidence in environmental litigation — an area of law where success or failure increasingly depends on the exacting preparation and presentation of expert scientific evidence. Written by a professional mining and geological engineer and a practicing attorney, Environmental Law for Engineers and Geoscientists prepares students for the numerous environmental regulatory encounters they can expect when dealing with various statutes, laws, regulations, and agency rules that govern, affect, and apply to environmental engineering projects. It provides a working knowledge of how to judge whether or not a project is in compliance with regulations, and how to ensure that it is.

"Robert Lee Aston's eight university degrees, earned over the course of more than 50 years, have given him an incredibly broad and deep background in both engineering and the law. His curriculum vitae is relevant because Environmental Law for Engineers and Geoscientists can benefit not only engineering and science students in need of some legal background, but also lawyers entering environmental law practice. … With detailed explanations, background, and analysis, along with an abundance of citations of actual cases, Environmental Law for Engineers and Geoscientists covers as much as one could hope for in a single text on such a huge topic…" —Civil Engineering, September 2002 b "Being an engineer whose major contact with the law has been as an expert witness … I very much would have liked to have the opportunity of taking a course of this title, specially if taught by the author" —G. F. Bennett, Journal of Hazardous Material, Vol. 93, July 2002

Robert Lee Aston